Construction
Three summits or four
in clouded tartan cringe
as cement stains
spread into their roots.
You might try
painting a tree or two,
if you can remember,
a flourish
while concrete multiplies
and fills the earth and subdues it
and has dominion over
the lines of metal serpents
swarming the foothills.
Brush over the cranes
and yellow jackets
to give the hills back
the wildflower meadow and
the copse where a jackdaw
nursed a broken wing
or don’t and leave them
as exposed as the churning earth
underneath them.
Blurred
A lopsided gatepost
half in the ground, half out
lets butterflies pass by politely
ignoring the dead rat in a
paper bag nearby.
Fields turn towards dawn,
bacon, bread, slurring cows
for company.
Mothers and calves
throw bröls to each other.
Bathed in engine fumes
the race is on to follow the truck
carrying salt blocks,
their coats are day and night.
See how the sun under Sydney Wood
rushes to be on time,
crawling through celestial traffic,
fashioning shadows
that leak like molasses from the
gatepost, from butterflies suspended
like puppets, from me.
Night clings to us
by the slimmest thread,
and we turn indigo before everything
is scorched bone white.
Fala Knowe
and the dust–
and the flies–
and the grayling butterfly–
and the skylark screaming–
and the spider web glistening–
and the cairie far off, approaching–
and the red grouse goback, back, back–
and the walkers panting uphill–
and the gowany hills echoing–
goback, back, back–
and the spider feasting–
and the sooch nearby–
* Cairie n. the motion of clouds in stormy weather
sooch n. the sighing of the wind
gowany adj. abounding with daisies
Lead Image: Wire in the Wild by Zosia Korcz